


Give In

by beautifulterriblequeen



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Combat, Feels what feels, Friendship goals, Gen, I'm attacking you because I care, Moonshadow elves, Moonshadows gonna Moonshadow, Prince Runaan, Runaan and his bodyguards, Tactical discussion, bit of angst, heyoo rayla's parents have names now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:21:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21687481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifulterriblequeen/pseuds/beautifulterriblequeen
Summary: Prince Runaan has caught feelings, but he refuses to admit it, and it's driving his bodyguards crazy. So they decide to help him understand that sometimes, surrender is the only way.
Relationships: Ethari/Runaan (The Dragon Prince), Lain/Tiadrin (The Dragon Prince)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 179





	Give In

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic since S3 dropped. I have been so busy! But I hope you enjoy this peek at Prince Runaan and his helpful friends. Updated now with Rayla's parents' canon names.

“Permission to try to kill you, Your Highness?” Lain stood beside his wife in the training circle and hefted the end of his slingstaff against his palm.

“Granted,” Runaan replied warily, “but if—”

Tiadrin’s reachsword lashed out at his chest before he could finish speaking. He pivoted away from her strike in shock and nearly lost his head to Lain’s flying blade as it zinged by at the end of its cable. With a quick tumble, Runaan flung himself backward and lifted a simple longstaff from the rack at the edge of the training circle. He spun back just in time to catch Tiadrin’s sword around it, instead of around his own neck.

She yanked hard, and he let the staff go. He snatched another from the rack with his free hand as the first one clattered into the distance. But he’d barely wrapped his palm around it before every weapon in the rack shivered into smithereens under a massive blow from one cabled end of Lain’s slingstaff. A cacophony of shattering wood echoed around the room, leaving Runaan standing comically still, arm outstretched, looking as calm as a statue.

Runaan was anything but calm.

His heart rate had skyrocketed, and he could feel the tension of misjudging his opponents’ intentions in his clenched teeth. He hadn’t really thought they meant it.

But they did. And he knew why. Runaan had been trained from a very early age to separate his head from his heart. It was the easiest way to lead among elves who embraced death as much as they did life. Routine and rule were his air and water. But he’d also trained to be flexible in battle tactics, shifting and bending like moonlight in order to stay on target no matter what his circumstances. Runaan was at his most mentally open when his life was in danger. And his bodyguards had just asked permission to endanger it.

_Oh, this is going to hurt._

There was nothing for it now, though. Runaan had given his bodyguards explicit permission to murder him if they could. All their years of training, which had once kept him safe and secure, were now being turned against him. And after no more than five seconds, Runaan deeply and viscerally understood why Lain and Tiadrin had been so good at their job.

No one wanted to fight them. Ever.

Runaan hadn’t really wanted to fight them, either, but they’d insisted that he was being too stubborn to hear them out on the issue of a certain craftsman. He’d stubbornly disagreed.

And then he’d heard himself. And so here he was. Winner take all.

Swiftly approaching footsteps told him he’d waited too long to execute the next part of his defense. Those were Tiadrin’s footsteps. She’d be jumping any moment—

Runaan spun and parried her downward sword strike with a careful angling of his staff. Her momentum made his feet skid backward, and the edge of her blade shaved several bits of wood off his weapon. He pivoted around to the side and body-checked her shoulder, but she retaliated with a swing that would’ve cut him in two if he hadn’t arched back out of reach. With a quick spin, she slammed her blade against Runaan’s staff again, grimacing up at him with effort. Their feet danced for stability and tripping angles as their arms struggled for leverage.

Tiadrin’s voice came out with effort. “Have you kissed him yet? He’s got nice lips. I bet he’s a _great_ kisser.”

“Wh-” Runaan’s stomach flipped, and he lost his focus entirely.

Tiadrin’s blade shoved his staff back against his chest, and he tumbled to the ground with his long ponytail splayed out around his head. She leaped after him, sword high.

Runaan caught her wrists in his hands and stopped the blade a few inches above his nose, but she landed heavily on his chest, and he wheezed under her weight. Her blade dropped another inch.

“Have you, then? Or are you just a pretty coward, Runaan?”

Runaan’s denial hissed out through his teeth. “I… I am _not_ …”

Tiadrin leaned all her weight against his grip, and her sword began to descend again. “I say y’ are. Elf up or die tryin’.” She leaned around her own hands and winked down at him. “This here’s the ‘die tryin’’ part.”

He squinted up at her sassy grin, bared his teeth at her, and bucked her off over his head. He kept a grip on her wrists and rolled back with her until he could repay the favor of sitting atop her chest. She left off trying to stab him, letting him control the hand that held her sword, and he fell for her feint. She caught him with a surprise right hook, followed by a right foot that caught him right in the ear and knocked him sideways.

As she sat up, bringing her sword to bear again, Runaan tumbled away. Instinct screamed at him that he hadn’t seen Lain in half a minute—

He lurched to a stop and leaped to his feet just in time to avoid Lain’s slingstaff tip. The heavy curving blade embedded itself in the stone floor a handsbreadth from where Runaan had been. Runaan scooped up one of his lost staves and tangled one end around the slingstaff’s cable before yanking hard.

“You need to tell him, Runaan.” Lain skidded toward him, then leaped to strike with the other end of his own staff.

“It wouldn’t change anything.” Runaan ducked and jabbed his staff straight at Lain’s chest. But Lain went airborne, slashing through the air, foot flying. Runaan pivoted to avoid the deadly blade, but Lain’s boot caught him in the back of the shoulder. He used the kick’s momentum to bound through a handspring and back to his feet, but Tiadrin was waiting right in front of his landing zone.

“So you admit it, at least.” She smirked at him before she swung her sword.

Instead of landing where she could hit him, Runaan dropped to his knees, arched back, and landed in a slide that carried him between her feet. “I admit nothing.” He tripped her with the staff as he passed by, and she growled after him as she got back to her feet.

“Lies, from an honorable prince? Lain, is this who we’ve been servin’ all this time?”

Runaan spun back to his feet just in time to see Lain falling out of the air, foot outstretched to collide with his chest. He tossed the staff airborne, grabbed Lain’s boot with both hands, and twisted as he dodged aside. Lain flailed like a cat, but he skidded away in a three point landing. Runaan caught his staff again but immediately had to duck beneath Tiadrin’s reachsword, feeling the wind of its passing ruffle his hair. He straightened up and snapped the staff out toward where Tiadrin would pivot to, but she anticipated him, and her sword cut his staff in two.

Runaan hurled the short wooden length at her head, and she blocked it easily. But the distraction allowed him to charge straight at her, intent on another body-check.

A hand tightened in his long hair and yanked him to a stop. “No one tackles my wife but me, my prince,” Lain said lightly. He reeled Runaan in by his hair and locked an arm around his throat.

Outraged by Lain’s audacity in employing a tactic that had always been off-limits, Runaan arched his legs out, ready to drop and throw Lain over his shoulder. But Tiadrin spun in from the side and smacked him in the gut with the broken end of his own staff, knocking the wind out of him.

As Runaan wheezed for breath, Lain dropped to one knee behind Runaan and dragged the prince down with him. Tiadrin drew a dagger from her belt and knelt on one knee astride Runaan’s legs. Her free hand seized one of his side tails, and she bent his hair around the dagger, ready to slice it short.

Runaan’s eyes blazed up at her with betrayal and outrage. “You wouldn’t dare.”

With zero further ado, Tiadrin sliced off the lower two inches of his side tail and sprinkled the shorn white locks sassily from her fingertips. Then she moved the blade higher and wrapped his hair around it again.

“Tiadrin!”

“Yes, your high and mighty princeliness?” she asked sweetly.

Runaan raised his eyes from the blade to Tiadrin’s turquoise eyes, so like his own. She had something he’d never thought he’d feel. Yet here he was, caught in its throes. He felt lost, storm-tossed, all at sea. How did she do it? He had never been able to bring himself to ask, even though the love she and Lain found had been right under his nose. He let his voice break. “Please…”

Lain loosened his grip for a moment, sympathetic. It was all Runaan needed. He seized Lain’s fingers and wrenched his arm free, using his horns against Lain’s neck—a dangerous move, but the flutter in Runaan’s belly told him he was coming too close to a truth he had been hiding from for weeks. The bodyguard flinched back, and Runaan used Lain’s arm as a ram to break Tiadrin’s hold on his hair. She dropped her blade rather than cut her husband. The pair of them tumbled one way and Runaan flung himself in the other.

They all got to their feet at the same time.

Lain rested one end of his slingstaff on the floor while Tiadrin gave his neck a quick damage check. Runaan watched her fingers gently press against her husband’s skin and felt a pang in his gut. It twisted harder when he squeezed her hand reassuringly and offered her a fond look, which she returned.

Then Runaan squinted at them both. “You think you’re being clever,” he accused softly.

“We _are_ bein’ clever,” Tiadrin sassed. “It’s you who’s blind as a bat, ya daft lump.”

“You deserve to be happy, Runaan,” Lain added. “We’re just trying to beat that into your thick skull.”

Tiadrin nodded. “Someone has to. And we take our service very seriously.” The cheeky grin that played across her lips as she sketched a light bow seemed to say otherwise, but Runaan knew the depth of her loyalty.

Still, it didn’t feel right, what they wanted him to do. It felt… _selfish_. And twenty years of strict royal indoctrination wouldn’t let Runaan reach out and take anything for himself, not unless everyone else’s needs had been served first.

“Nope. He’s no’ gettin’ it,” Tiadrin grumped.

“Round two, then.” Lain wasn’t asking.

They leaped at Runaan at the same moment, and their deadly dance began all over again. Runaan bounced between the two of them, using Lain for shelter from Tiadrin’s reachsword, wrapping Lain’s cable around Tiadrin’s ankle to trip her—and nearly losing a finger in the process—and fending off their blows with desperate strikes from the one remaining intact wooden staff in the room. He sprang off the wall when they tried to corner him. He even used Lain’s shoulders as a springboard to avoid his full-body tackle, rocketing himself into the air and Lain into Tiadrin’s arms, sending her skidding across the floor.

“Oh, he’s a stubborn one, all right,” Tiadrin said as she picked herself up.

“He must have it bad,” Lain agreed as he gave her a hand. “He wouldn’t fight this hard unless he really wanted it.”

“I don’t—” Runaan began, but a vision of Ethari’s smile wafted in front of his eyes, and he looked away with hot cheeks.

Tiadrin’s foot caught him in the shoulder, spinning him, and Lain tackled him to the floor face down and sat on him, locking his arm behind his back. Runaan struggled hard, but his own heart had begun warring on their side, and he could feel his defeat crawling up from the dark hole where he’d stuffed his feelings. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to catch his breath.

Lain’s hand on the back of his shoulder was firm, but reassuring. “Runaan. Think of Ethari.”

“And not just about how adorably sweet he is.” Tiadrin sprawled next to him so she could meet his eye as her husband pinned him to the floor.

“He loves you. We all see it,” Lain continued. “But you know he’ll never say a word to you about it. You’re a prince. You’re _his_ prince. There’s nothing in the Moonshadow Forest you couldn’t ask for and receive. But it’s different for him. It’s different for all of us. You have a privilege we’ll never know. A freedom Ethari can never take advantage of. And if you refuse to use it, you’ll hurt him. And I know that’s the opposite of what you want.”

“Because you love him, too.” Tiadrin’s voice was soft. “Runaan. _You love Ethari_. Please, _tell_ him. You’re driving us all mad. Some things…” her eyes trailed up to meet her husband’s, and a soft smile graced her lips, “…some things aren’t _meant_ to be kept secret.” Her gaze sharpened and pinned Runaan in place again. “You’ve a lot of shadow in your soul, my prince, and the only cure for that is more light. You know how full of light Ethari is. It’s why you’re drawn to him. He’s your balance. Your other half. Your match.”

Lain chuckled suddenly. “I guess Runaan’s _met his match_ , then?”

Tiadrin swatted his knee. “Shu’ up, you. Exactly no one asked for a pun just now.” But a smile danced in her eyes.

“Tiadrin’s right, though,” Lain said. He kept his grip tight on Runaan’s locked wrist. “You’re a prince, and your duty is to serve your people, just as ours is to serve you. But, Runaan, you’re not serving anyone when you’re this tangled up. You’re a bit of a mess, my friend. Everyone’s noticing, no matter how hard you try to hide it. You’re not fooling anyone, and you’re pushing away the softest, sweetest elf I’ve ever met in my life. No offense, love,” he added to Tiadrin.

She swatted his knee again. “Call me soft one more time, and see what happens.”

Lain chuckled. “Tiadrin’s my match, Runaan. Ethari could be yours. If you just reach out to him, he’ll reach back.”

Runaan still didn’t feel like he could catch his breath properly. His eyes stung, and he told himself it was just sweat. He closed them against the sight of his friends and whispered in the darkness, “But what if he doesn’t?”

Lain’s hand squeezed his shoulder. “Ethari’s secrets aren’t mine to share, Runaan. But I promise you, with every bit of my soul, _he will_.”

A deep certainty vibrated in Lain’s voice. Runaan felt it shiver through him, too, and what it told him set his horns tingling. For the first time since they’d begun fighting, Runaan surrendered himself to his destiny. His breath eased all the way out. His shoulders slumped. He stopped resisting Lain’s arm lock. His feet relaxed against the floor. And his ear points drooped.

When Runaan drew his next breath, it filled him with a cold clarity that felt like breathing pure moonlight. His eyes found Tiadrin’s. And he smiled.

“Let him up, ya fool,” Tiadrin immediately blurted. She got to her knees as Lain swung himself off of Runaan’s back. As Runaan pushed himself up into a kneeling position with them, she added, “He’s got a craftsman to see.”

Runaan took another hesitant new breath and looked at his friends. Slowly, he held out his hands, one toward each of them, and they clasped them tightly, squeezing hard, pouring their support and good wishes into him. The strength of their friendship brought a soft smile to his face. “Thank you for trying to kill me. It was exactly what I needed.”

“And now that we’ve threatened you with death, it’s time to go get a life,” Tiadrin sassed. “Get on wi’ ye, then.”

Runaan leaped to his feet and strode from the training hall. The wind fluttered through his hair—and his one uneven side tail—he was dusty and sweaty, and he was bleeding in a couple of places, but for once, his appearance didn’t matter. He couldn’t keep the smile off his face as he made his way across the Silvergrove.

In his chest, a single word thrummed with every beat of his heart: _Ethari. Ethari. Ethari_


End file.
